To what deities, it will be asked, were the prayers and hymns of these collections addressed 1 This is an interesting inquiry, for these were probably the very deities "worshipped under similar names by our Aryan progenitors in their primeval home somewhere on the table-land of Central Asia, perhaps in the region of Bokhara, not far from the sources of the Oxus \ The answer is: They worshipped those physical forces before which all nations, if guided solely by the light of nature, have in the early period of their life instinctively bowed down, and before which even the more civilized and enlightened have always been compelled to bend in awe and reverence, if not in adoration.
To our Aryan forefathers in their Asiatic home God's power was exhibited in the forces of nature even more evidently than to ourselves. Lands, houses, flocks, herds, men, and animals were more frequently than in Western climates at the mercy of winds, fire, and water, and the sun's rays appeared to be endowed with a potency quite beyond the experience of any European country. We cannot be surprised, then, that these forces were regarded by our Eastern progenitors as actual manifestations, either of one deity in different moods or of separate rival deities contending for supremacy. Nor is the Pitris, therefore its sound is impure.' Kulluka, however, in his commentary is careful to state that the Sama-veda is not really impure, but only apparently so. This semblance of impurity may perhaps result from its association with deceased persons and its repetition at a time of A-sauca. The Sama-veda is really a mere reproduction of parts of the Rik, transposed and scattered about piece-meal, only seventy-eight verses in the whole Sama-veda being, it is said, untraceable to the present recension of the Rik. The greatest number of its verses are taken from the ninth Mandala of the Rik, which is in praise of the Soma plant, the Sama-veda being a collection of liturgical forms for the Soma ceremonies of the TJdgatri priests, as the Yajus is for the sacrifices performed by the Adhvaryu priests.
1 Professor Whitney doubts this usual assumption (Lectures, p. zoo).
